States: Karnataka; Hollow Truce

India Today
Nov 16,1998

KARNATAKA
Hollow Truce

The deal struck between the warring factions of the ruling Janata Dal may have given the chief minister a breather but the crisis is far from over.

By Javed M Ansari and Stephen David

Deve Gowda with Patel For weeks, they had been fighting, putting in jeopardy the fate of the only Janata Dal (JD) government in the country. But last week, all it took was a two-hour meeting over piping hot idlis to ensure that the calamity was averted -- for the time being at least. As Chief Minister J.H. Patel walked out of JD leader H.D. Deve Gowda's Safdarjung Road residence in Delhi he was beaming as the former prime minister, the rallying point for Patel's opponents within the JD, had agreed to call a truce. It was the first piece of good news after months of bickering and open rebellion by party MLAs. A large part of the credit for this is being given to former party chief S.R. Bommai who acted as a mediator and brought Patel and Deve Gowda face to face.

For the ailing Patel, still recuperating from a hernia operation, it meant the immediate challenge to his Government had been staved off. The dissidents had served an ultimatum on the party central leadership to either convene the Janata Dal Legislature Party (JDLP) meeting on November 9 or face the consequences during the no-confidence motion against the Patel Government that the House took up last week. With the warring factions closing ranks, the JD with 120 members -- 44 of them owing allegiance to Deve Gowda -- in the 224-member Assembly easily overcame the no-trust motion.

The decision to hold the JDLP meeting on November 13 after the current assembly session has no doubt given Patel a breather. But the issue of leadership change persists, leading a senior party leader to comment wryly, "It remains to be seen how long this truce will last." A confident Bommai insists that an amicable solution will be hammered out. "We have done it before, we will do it again," he said after the meeting.

Next week, Bommai and Deve Gowda along with party President Sharad Yadav will be in Bangalore. Though their primary aim is to sell the peace package to party functionaries, they will also be lending their ears to the MLAs who had been demanding a change in leadership. "The main task before us is to tone up the administration and activate the party so that we can win the assembly elections next year," explains Bommai. In Gowdaspeak, that means the party doesn't stand a chance as long as Patel leads the Government.

At the JDLP meeting, Patel is expected to make some conciliatory gestures. Among them: redressing the caste and regional imbalances in his ministry and the state unit of the party, inducting some of Deve Gowda's nominees into the Cabinet and reshuffling the heads of state corporations and undertakings. Anything less would mean the end of the truce. It would also mean handing over the advantage to the opposition parties. Says former Congress chief minister Veerappa Moily: "They are paving the way for the return of the Congress."

The truce itself came about after much dithering. It took a lot of persuasion from the party's central leadership, which had hitherto maintained a hands-off approach towards developments in Karnataka, for Deve Gowda to give in. Sharad Yadav, who enjoys a good rapport with the Deve Gowda, pleaded with him not to push the issue beyond a point as it would not only lead to the downfall of the only JD government in the country, but also lead to a split at the Centre. The six-member parliamentary party is equally divided between pro- and anti-Deve Gowda camps. The adhesive that binds them is the government in Karnataka and should there be any precipitate action on that front the party would break up.

The JD may have averted a calamity for now. But the fact remains that the party's role and influence in the country have been declining rapidly since the fall of the V.P. Singh government in 1990. When the National Front was in power, the party had 141 MPs. In 1996 the number went down to 44, and after Laloo Prasad Yadav left in July 1997, it barely managed to win six Lok Sabha seats in the general election this year. Having sidestepped the present crisis, the party leaders cannot afford to be complacent. They must realise that unless they rise above petty politics, it will not be long before the JD is reduced to a sideshow.

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